Chapter IV: Of the Limits to the Authority of Society Over the Individual

WHAT, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself?
Where does the authority of society begin? How much of human life should be assigned to
individuality, and how much to society?

Each will receive its proper share, if each has that which more particularly concerns
it. To individuality should belong the part of life in which it is chiefly the individual
that is interested; to society, the part which chiefly interests society.

Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose is answered by
inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it, every one who receives
the protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society
renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct
towards the rest. This conduct consists, first, in not injuring the interests of one
another; or rather certain interests, which, either by express legal provision or by tacit
understanding, ought to be considered as rights; and secondly, in each person's bearing
his share (to be fixed on some equitable principle) of the labors and sacrifices incurred
for defending the society or its members from injury and molestation. These conditions
society is justified in enforcing, at all costs to those who endeavor to withhold
fulfilment. Nor is this all that society may do. The acts of an individual may be hurtful
to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the length of
violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by
opinion, though not by law. As soon as any part of a person's conduct affects
prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question
whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes
open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining any such question when a
person's conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself, or needs not affect
them unless they like (all the persons concerned being of full age, and the ordinary
amount of understanding). In all such cases there should be perfect freedom, legal and
social, to do the action and stand the consequences.It would be a great misunderstanding
of this doctrine, to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that
human beings have no business with each other's conduct in life, and that they should not
concern themselves about the well-doing or well-being of one another, unless their own
interest is involved. Instead of any diminution, there is need of a great increase of
disinterested exertion to promote the good of others. But disinterested benevolence can
find other instruments to persuade people to their good, than whips and scourges, either
of the literal or the metaphorical sort. I am the last person to undervalue the
self-regarding virtues; they are only second in importance, if even second, to the social.
It is equally the business of education to cultivate both. But even education works by
conviction and persuasion as well as by compulsion, and it is by the former only that,
when the period of education is past, the self-regarding virtues should be inculcated.
Human beings owe to each other help to distinguish the better from the worse, and
encouragement to choose the former and avoid the latter. They should be forever
stimulating each other to increased exercise of their higher faculties, and increased
direction of their feelings and aims towards wise instead of foolish, elevating instead of
degrading, objects and contemplations. But neither one person, nor any number of persons,
is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with
his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it. He is the person most
interested in his own well-being, the interest which any other person, except in cases of
strong personal attachment, can have in it, is trifling, compared with that which he
himself has; the interest which society has in him individually (except as to his conduct
to others) is fractional, and altogether indirect: while, with respect to his own feelings
and circumstances, the most ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge immeasurably
surpassing those that can be possessed by any one else. The interference of society to
overrule his judgment and purposes in what only regards himself, must be grounded on
general presumptions; which may be altogether wrong, and even if right, are as likely as
not to be misapplied to individual cases, by persons no better acquainted with the
circumstances of such cases than those are who look at them merely from without. In this
department, therefore, of human affairs, Individuality has its proper field of action. In
the conduct of human beings towards one another, it is necessary that general rules should
for the most part be observed, in order that people may know what they have to expect; but
in each person's own concerns, his individual spontaneity is entitled to free exercise.
Considerations to aid his judgment, exhortations to strengthen his will, may be offered to
him, even obtruded on him, by others; but he, himself, is the final judge. All errors
which he is likely to commit against advice and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of
allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good.

I do not mean that the feelings with which a person is regarded by others, ought not to
be in any way affected by his self-regarding qualities or deficiencies. This is neither
possible nor desirable. If he is eminent in any of the qualities which conduce to his own
good, he is, so far, a proper object of admiration. He is so much the nearer to the ideal
perfection of human nature. If he is grossly deficient in those qualities, a sentiment the
opposite of admiration will follow. There is a degree of folly, and a degree of what may
be called (though the phrase is not unobjectionable) lowness or depravation of taste,
which, though it cannot justify doing harm to the person who manifests it, renders him
necessarily and properly a subject of distaste, or, in extreme cases, even of contempt: a
person could not have the opposite qualities in due strength without entertaining these
feelings. Though doing no wrong to any one, a person may so act as to compel us to judge
him, and feel to him, as a fool, or as a being of an inferior order: and since this
judgment and feeling are a fact which he would prefer to avoid, it is doing him a service
to warn him of it beforehand, as of any other disagreeable consequence to which he exposes
himself. It would be well, indeed, if this good office were much more freely rendered than
the common notions of politeness at present permit, and if one person could honestly point
out to another that he thinks him in fault, without being considered unmannerly or
presuming. We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of
any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are
not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to
parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us. We
have a right, and it may be our duty, to caution others against him, if we think his
example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he
associates. We may give others a preference over him in optional good offices, except
those which tend to his improvement. In these various modes a person may suffer very
severe penalties at the hands of others, for faults which directly concern only himself;
but he suffers these penalties only in so far as they are the natural, and, as it were,
the spontaneous consequences of the faults themselves, not because they are purposely
inflicted on him for the sake of punishment. A person who shows rashness, obstinacy,
self-conceit - who cannot live within moderate means - who cannot restrain himself from
hurtful indulgences - who pursues animal pleasures at the expense of those of feeling and
intellect - must expect to be lowered in the opinion of others, and to have a less share
of their favorable sentiments, but of this he has no right to complain, unless he has
merited their favor by special excellence in his social relations, and has thus
established a title to their good offices, which is not affected by his demerits towards
himself.

What I contend for is, that the inconveniences which are strictly inseparable from the
unfavorable judgment of others, are the only ones to which a person should ever be
subjected for that portion of his conduct and character which concerns his own good, but
which does not affect the interests of others in their relations with him. Acts injurious
to others require a totally different treatment. Encroachment on their rights; infliction
on them of any loss or damage not justified by his own rights; falsehood or duplicity in
dealing with them; unfair or ungenerous use of advantages over them; even selfish
abstinence from defending them against injury - these are fit objects of moral
reprobation, and, in grave cases, of moral retribution and punishment. And not only these
acts, but the dispositions which lead to them, are properly immoral, and fit subjects of
disapprobation which may rise to abhorrence. Cruelty of disposition; malice and
ill-nature; that most anti-social and odious of all passions, envy; dissimulation and
insincerity, irascibility on insufficient cause, and resentment disproportioned to the
provocation; the love of domineering over others; the desire to engross more than one's
share of advantages (the [greekword]{hubris?} of the Greeks); the pride which derives
gratification from the abasement of others; the egotism which thinks self and its concerns
more important than everything else, and decides all doubtful questions in his own favor;
- these are moral vices, and constitute a bad and odious moral character: unlike the
self-regarding faults previously mentioned, which are not properly immoralities, and to
whatever pitch they may be carried, do not constitute wickedness. They may be proofs of
any amount of folly, or want of personal dignity and self-respect; but they are only a
subject of moral reprobation when they involve a breach of duty to others, for whose sake
the individual is bound to have care for himself. What are called duties to ourselves are
not socially obligatory, unless circumstances render them at the same time duties to
others. The term duty to oneself, when it means anything more than prudence, means
self-respect or self-development; and for none of these is any one accountable to his
fellow-creatures, because for none of them is it for the good of mankind that he be held
accountable to them.

The distinction between the loss of consideration which a person may rightly incur by
defect of prudence or of personal dignity, and the reprobation which is due to him for an
offence against the rights of others, is not a merely nominal distinction. It makes a vast
difference both in our feelings and in our conduct towards him, whether he displeases us
in things in which we think we have a right to control him, or in things in which we know
that we have not. If he displeases us, we may express our distaste, and we may stand aloof
from a person as well as from a thing that displeases us; but we shall not therefore feel
called on to make his life uncomfortable. We shall reflect that he already bears, or will
bear, the whole penalty of his error; if he spoils his life by mismanagement, we shall
not, for that reason, desire to spoil it still further: instead of wishing to punish him,
we shall rather endeavor to alleviate his punishment, by showing him how he may avoid or
cure the evils his conduct tends to bring upon him. He may be to us an object of pity,
perhaps of dislike, but not of anger or resentment; we shall not treat him like an enemy
of society: the worst we shall think ourselves justified in doing is leaving him to
himself, If we do not interfere benevolently by showing interest or concern for him. It is
far otherwise if he has infringed the rules necessary for the protection of his
fellow-creatures, individually or collectively. The evil consequences of his acts do not
then fall on himself, but on others; and society, as the protector of all its members,
must retaliate on him; must inflict pain on him for the express purpose of punishment, and
must take care that it be sufficiently severe. In the one case, he is an offender at our
bar, and we are called on not only to sit in judgment on him, but, in one shape or
another, to execute our own sentence: in the other case, it is not our part to inflict any
suffering on him, except what may incidentally follow from our using the same liberty in
the regulation of our own affairs, which we allow to him in his.

The distinction here pointed out between the part of a person's life which concerns
only himself, and that which concerns others, many persons will refuse to admit. How (it
may be asked) can any part of the conduct of a member of society be a matter of
indifference to the other members? No person is an entirely isolated being; it is
impossible for a person to do anything seriously or permanently hurtful to himself,
without mischief reaching at least to his near connections, and often far beyond them. If
he injures his property, he does harm to those who directly or indirectly derived support
from it, and usually diminishes, by a greater or less amount, the general resources of the
community. If he deteriorates his bodily or mental faculties, he not only brings evil upon
all who depended on him for any portion of their happiness, but disqualifies himself for
rendering the services which he owes to his fellow-creatures generally; perhaps becomes a
burden on their affection or benevolence; and if such conduct were very frequent, hardly
any offence that is committed would detract more from the general sum of good. Finally, if
by his vices or follies a person does no direct harm to others, he is nevertheless (it may
be said) injurious by his example; and ought to be compelled to control himself, for the
sake of those whom the sight or knowledge of his conduct might corrupt or mislead.

And even (it will be added) if the consequences of misconduct could be confined to the
vicious or thoughtless individual, ought society to abandon to their own guidance those
who are manifestly unfit for it? If protection against themselves is confessedly due to
children and persons under age, is not society equally bound to afford it to persons of
mature years who are equally incapable of self-government? If gambling, or drunkenness, or
incontinence, or idleness, or uncleanliness, are as injurious to happiness, and as great a
hindrance to improvement, as many or most of the acts prohibited by law, why (it may be
asked) should not law, so far as is consistent with practicability and social convenience,
endeavor to repress these also? And as a supplement to the unavoidable imperfections of
law, ought not opinion at least to organize a powerful police against these vices, and
visit rigidly with social penalties those who are known to practise them? There is no
question here (it may be said) about restricting individuality, or impeding the trial of
new and original experiments in living. The only things it is sought to prevent are things
which have been tried and condemned from the beginning of the world until now; things
which experience has shown not to be useful or suitable to any person's individuality.
There must be some length of time and amount of experience, after which a moral or
prudential truth may be regarded as established, and it is merely desired to prevent
generation after generation from falling over the same precipice which has been fatal to
their predecessors.

I fully admit that the mischief which a person does to himself, may seriously affect,
both through their sympathies and their interests, those nearly connected with him, and in
a minor degree, society at large. When, by conduct of this sort, a person is led to
violate a distinct and assignable obligation to any other person or persons, the case is
taken out of the self-regarding class, and becomes amenable to moral disapprobation in the
proper sense of the term. If, for example, a man, through intemperance or extravagance,
becomes unable to pay his debts, or, having undertaken the moral responsibility of a
family, becomes from the same cause incapable of supporting or educating them, he is
deservedly reprobated, and might be justly punished; but it is for the breach of duty to
his family or creditors, not for the extravagence. If the resources which ought to have
been devoted to them, had been diverted from them for the most prudent investment, the
moral culpability would have been the same. George Barnwell murdered his uncle to get
money for his mistress, but if he had done it to set himself up in business, he would
equally have been hanged. Again, in the frequent case of a man who causes grief to his
family by addiction to bad habits, he deserves reproach for his unkindness or ingratitude;
but so he may for cultivating habits not in themselves vicious, if they are painful to
those with whom he passes his life, or who from personal ties are dependent on him for
their comfort. Whoever fails in the consideration generally due to the interests and
feelings of others, not being compelled by some more imperative duty, or justified by
allowable self-preference, is a subject of moral disapprobation for that failure, but not
for the cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to himself, which may have
remotely led to it. In like manner, when a person disables himself, by conduct purely
self-regarding, from the performance of some definite duty incumbent on him to the public,
he is guilty of a social offence. No person ought to be punished simply for being drunk;
but a soldier or a policeman should be punished for being drunk on duty. Whenever, in
short, there is a definite damage, or a definite risk of damage, either to an individual
or to the public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty, and placed in that of
morality or law.

But with regard to the merely contingent or, as it may be called, constructive injury
which a person causes to society, by conduct which neither violates any specific duty to
the public, nor occasions perceptible hurt to any assignable individual except himself;
the inconvenience is one which society can afford to bear, for the sake of the greater
good of human freedom. If grown persons are to be punished for not taking proper care of
themselves, I would rather it were for their own sake, than under pretence of preventing
them from impairing their capacity of rendering to society benefits which society does not
pretend it has a right to exact. But I cannot consent to argue the point as if society had
no means of bringing its weaker members up to its ordinary standard of rational conduct,
except waiting till they do something irrational, and then punishing them, legally or
morally, for it. Society has had absolute power over them during all the early portion of
their existence: it has had the whole period of childhood and nonage in which to try
whether it could make them capable of rational conduct in life. The existing generation is
master both of the training and the entire circumstances of the generation to come; it
cannot indeed make them perfectly wise and good, because it is itself so lamentably
deficient in goodness and wisdom; and its best efforts are not always, in individual
cases, its most successful ones; but it is perfectly well able to make the rising
generation, as a whole, as good as, and a little better than, itself. If society lets any
considerable number of its members grow up mere children, incapable of being acted on by
rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame for the
consequences. Armed not only with all the powers of education, but with the ascendency
which the authority of a received opinion always exercises over the minds who are least
fitted to judge for themselves; and aided by the natural penalties which cannot be
prevented from falling on those who incur the distaste or the contempt of those who know
them; let not society pretend that it needs, besides all this, the power to issue commands
and enforce obedience in the personal concerns of individuals, in which, on all principles
of justice and policy, the decision ought to rest with those who are to abide the
consequences. Nor is there anything which tends more to discredit and frustrate the better
means of influencing conduct, than a resort to the worse. If there be among those whom it
is attempted to coerce into prudence or temperance, any of the material of which vigorous
and independent characters are made, they will infallibly rebel against the yoke. No such
person will ever feel that others have a right to control him in his concerns, such as
they have to prevent him from injuring them in theirs; and it easily comes to be
considered a mark of spirit and courage to fly in the face of such usurped authority, and
do with ostentation the exact opposite of what it enjoins; as in the fashion of grossness
which succeeded, in the time of Charles II., to the fanatical moral intolerance of the
Puritans. With respect to what is said of the necessity of protecting society from the bad
example set to others by the vicious or the self-indulgent; it is true that bad example
may have a pernicious effect, especially the example of doing wrong to others with
impunity to the wrong-doer. But we are now speaking of conduct which, while it does no
wrong to others, is supposed to do great harm to the agent himself: and I do not see how
those who believe this, can think otherwise than that the example, on the whole, must be
more salutary than hurtful, since, if it displays the misconduct, it displays also the
painful or degrading consequences which, if the conduct is justly censured, must be
supposed to be in all or most cases attendant on it.

But the strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public with
purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes
wrongly, and in the wrong place. On questions of social morality, of duty to others, the
opinion of the public, that is, of an overruling majority, though often wrong, is likely
to be still oftener right; because on such questions they are only required to judge of
their own interests; of the manner in which some mode of conduct, if allowed to be
practised, would affect themselves. But the opinion of a similar majority, imposed as a
law on the minority, on questions of self-regarding conduct, is quite as likely to be
wrong as right; for in these cases public opinion means, at the best, some people's
opinion of what is good or bad for other people; while very often it does not even mean
that; the public, with the most perfect indifference, passing over the pleasure or
convenience of those whose conduct they censure, and considering only their own
preference. There are many who consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which they
have a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings; as a religious bigot,
when charged with disregarding the religious feelings of others, has been known to retort
that they disregard his feelings, by persisting in their abominable worship or creed. But
there is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of
another who is offended at his holding it; no more than between the desire of a thief to
take a purse, and the desire of the right owner to keep it. And a person's taste is as
much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his purse. It is easy for any one to
imagine an ideal public, which leaves the freedom and choice of individuals in all
uncertain matters undisturbed, and only requires them to abstain from modes of conduct
which universal experience has condemned. But where has there been seen a public which set
any such limit to its censorship? or when does the public trouble itself about universal
experience. In its interferences with personal conduct it is seldom thinking of anything
but the enormity of acting or feeling differently from itself; and this standard of
judgment, thinly disguised, is held up to mankind as the dictate of religion and
philosophy, by nine tenths of all moralists and speculative writers. These teach that
things are right because they are right; because we feel them to be so. They tell us to
search in our own minds and hearts for laws of conduct binding on ourselves and on all
others. What can the poor public do but apply these instructions, and make their own
personal feelings of good and evil, if they are tolerably unanimous in them, obligatory on
all the world?

The evil here pointed out is not one which exists only in theory; and it may perhaps be
expected that I should specify the instances in which the public of this age and country
improperly invests its own preferences with the character of moral laws. I am not writing
an essay on the aberrations of existing moral feeling. That is too weighty a subject to be
discussed parenthetically, and by way of illustration. Yet examples are necessary, to show
that the principle I maintain is of serious and practical moment, and that I am not
endeavoring to erect a barrier against imaginary evils. And it is not difficult to show,
by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police, until
it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of
the most universal of all human propensities.

As a first instance, consider the antipathies which men cherish on no better grounds
than that persons whose religious opinions are different from theirs, do not practise
their religious observances, especially their religious abstinences. To cite a rather
trivial example, nothing in the creed or practice of Christians does more to envenom the
hatred of Mahomedans against them, than the fact of their eating pork. There are few acts
which Christians and Europeans regard with more unaffected disgust, than Mussulmans regard
this particular mode of satisfying hunger. It is, in the first place, an offence against
their religion; but this circumstance by no means explains either the degree or the kind
of their repugnance; for wine also is forbidden by their religion, and to partake of it is
by all Mussulmans accounted wrong, but not disgusting. Their aversion to the flesh of the
``unclean beast'' is, on the contrary, of that peculiar character, resembling an
instinctive antipathy, which the idea of uncleanness, when once it thoroughly sinks into
the feelings, seems always to excite even in those whose personal habits are anything but
scrupulously cleanly and of which the sentiment of religious impurity, so intense in the
Hindoos, is a remarkable example. Suppose now that in a people, of whom the majority were
Mussulmans, that majority should insist upon not permitting pork to be eaten within the
limits of the country. This would be nothing new in Mahomedan countries. Would it be a
legitimate exercise of the moral authority of public opinion? and if not, why not? The
practice is really revolting to such a public. They also sincerely think that it is
forbidden and abhorred by the Deity. Neither could the prohibition be censured as
religious persecution. It might be religious in its origin, but it would not be
persecution for religion, since nobody's religion makes it a duty to eat pork. The only
tenable ground of condemnation would be, that with the personal tastes and self-regarding
concerns of individuals the public has no business to interfere.

To come somewhat nearer home: the majority of Spaniards consider it a gross impiety,
offensive in the highest degree to the Supreme Being, to worship him in any other manner
than the Roman Catholic; and no other public worship is lawful on Spanish soil. The people
of all Southern Europe look upon a married clergy as not only irreligious, but unchaste,
indecent, gross, disgusting. What do Protestants think of these perfectly sincere
feelings, and of the attempt to enforce them against non-Catholics? Yet, if mankind are
justified in interfering with each other's liberty in things which do not concern the
interests of others, on what principle is it possible consistently to exclude these cases?
or who can blame people for desiring to suppress what they regard as a scandal in the
sight of God and man?

No stronger case can be shown for prohibiting anything which is regarded as a personal
immorality, than is made out for suppressing these practices in the eyes of those who
regard them as impieties; and unless we are willing to adopt the logic of persecutors, and
to say that we may persecute others because we are right, and that they must not persecute
us because they are wrong, we must beware of admitting a principle of which we should
resent as a gross injustice the application to ourselves.

The preceding instances may be objected to, although unreasonably, as drawn from
contingencies impossible among us: opinion, in this country, not being likely to enforce
abstinence from meats, or to interfere with people for worshipping, and for either
marrying or not marrying, according to their creed or inclination. The next example,
however, shall be taken from an interference with liberty which we have by no means passed
all danger of. Wherever the Puritans have been sufficiently powerful, as in New England,
and in Great Britain at the time of the Commonwealth, they have endeavored, with
considerable success, to put down all public, and nearly all private, amusements:
especially music, dancing, public games, or other assemblages for purposes of diversion,
and the theatre. There are still in this country large bodies of persons by whose notions
of morality and religion these recreations are condemned; and those persons belonging
chiefly to the middle class, who are the ascendant power in the present social and
political condition of the kingdom, it is by no means impossible that persons of these
sentiments may at some time or other command a majority in Parliament. How will the
remaining portion of the community like to have the amusements that shall be permitted to
them regulated by the religious and moral sentiments of the stricter Calvinists and
Methodists? Would they not, with considerable peremptoriness, desire these intrusively
pious members of society to mind their own business? This is precisely what should be said
to every government and every public, who have the pretension that no person shall enjoy
any pleasure which they think wrong. But if the principle of the pretension be admitted,
no one can reasonably object to its being acted on in the sense of the majority, or other
preponderating power in the country; and all persons must be ready to conform to the idea
of a Christian commonwealth, as understood by the early settlers in New England, if a
religious profession similar to theirs should ever succeed in regaining its lost ground,
as religions supposed to be declining have so often been known to do.

To imagine another contingency, perhaps more likely to be realized than the one last
mentioned. There is confessedly a strong tendency in the modern world towards a democratic
constitution of society, accompanied or not by popular political institutions. It is
affirmed that in the country where this tendency is most completely realized - where both
society and the government are most democratic - the United States - the feeling of the
majority, to whom any appearance of a more showy or costly style of living than they can
hope to rival is disagreeable, operates as a tolerably effectual sumptuary law, and that
in many parts of the Union it is really difficult for a person possessing a very large
income, to find any mode of spending it, which will not incur popular disapprobation.
Though such statements as these are doubtless much exaggerated as a representation of
existing facts, the state of things they describe is not only a conceivable and possible,
but a probable result of democratic feeling, combined with the notion that the public has
a right to a veto on the manner in which individuals shall spend their incomes. We have
only further to suppose a considerable diffusion of Socialist opinions, and it may become
infamous in the eyes of the majority to possess more property than some very small amount,
or any income not earned by manual labor. Opinions similar in principle to these, already
prevail widely among the artisan class, and weigh oppressively on those who are amenable
to the opinion chiefly of that class, namely, its own members. It is known that the bad
workmen who form the majority of the operatives in many branches of industry, are
decidedly of opinion that bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as good, and that no
one ought to be allowed, through piecework or otherwise, to earn by superior skill or
industry more than others can without it. And they employ a moral police, which
occasionally becomes a physical one, to deter skilful workmen from receiving, and
employers from giving, a larger remuneration for a more useful service. If the public have
any jurisdiction over private concerns, I cannot see that these people are in fault, or
that any individual's particular public can be blamed for asserting the same authority
over his individual conduct, which the general public asserts over people in general.

But, without dwelling upon supposititious cases, there are, in our own day, gross
usurpations upon the liberty of private life actually practised, and still greater ones
threatened with some expectation of success, and opinions proposed which assert an
unlimited right in the public not only to prohibit by law everything which it thinks
wrong, but in order to get at what it thinks wrong, to prohibit any number of things which
it admits to be innocent.

Under the name of preventing intemperance the people of one English colony, and of
nearly half the United States, have been interdicted by law from making any use whatever
of fermented drinks, except for medical purposes: for prohibition of their sale is in
fact, as it is intended to be, prohibition of their use. And though the impracticability
of executing the law has caused its repeal in several of the States which had adopted it,
including the one from which it derives its name, an attempt has notwithstanding been
commenced, and is prosecuted with considerable zeal by many of the professed
philanthropists, to agitate for a similar law in this country. The association, or
``Alliance'' as it terms itself, which has been formed for this purpose, has acquired some
notoriety through the publicity given to a correspondence between its Secretary and one of
the very few English public men who hold that a politician's opinions ought to be founded
on principles. Lord Stanley's share in this correspondence is calculated to strengthen the
hopes already built on him, by those who know how rare such qualities as are manifested in
some of his public appearances, unhappily are among those who figure in political life.
The organ of the Alliance, who would ``deeply deplore the recognition of any principle
which could be wrested to justify bigotry and persecution," undertakes to point out
the ``broad and impassable barrier'' which divides such principles from those of the
association. ``All matters relating to thought, opinion, conscience, appear to me,'' he
says, ``to be without the sphere of legislation; all pertaining to social act, habit,
relation, subject only to a discretionary power vested in the State itself, and not in the
individual, to be within it.'' No mention is made of a third class, different from either
of these, viz., acts and habits which are not social, but individual; although it is to
this class, surely, that the act of drinking fermented liquors belongs. Selling fermented
liquors, however, is trading, and trading is a social act. But the infringement complained
of is not on the liberty of the seller, but on that of the buyer and consumer; since the
State might just as well forbid him to drink wine, as purposely make it impossible for him
to obtain it. The Secretary, however, says, ``I claim, as a citizen, a right to legislate
whenever my social rights are invaded by the social act of another.'' And now for the
definition of these ``social rights.'' ``If anything invades my social rights, certainly
the traffic in strong drink does. It destroys my primary right of security, by constantly
creating and stimulating social disorder. It invades my right of equality, by deriving a
profit from the creation of a misery, I am taxed to support. It impedes my right to free
moral and intellectual development, by surrounding my path with dangers, and by weakening
and demoralizing society, from which I have a right to claim mutual aid and intercourse.''
A theory of ``social rights,'' the like of which probably never before found its way into
distinct language - being nothing short of this - that it is the absolute social right of
every individual, that every other individual shall act in every respect exactly as he
ought; that whosoever fails thereof in the smallest particular, violates my social right,
and entitles me to demand from the legislature the removal of the grievance. So monstrous
a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty; there is no
violation of liberty which it would not justify; it acknowledges no right to any freedom
whatever, except perhaps to that of holding opinions in secret, without ever disclosing
them; for the moment an opinion which I consider noxious, passes any one's lips, it
invades all the ``social rights" attributed to me by the Alliance. The doctrine
ascribes to all mankind a vested interest in each other's moral, intellectual, and even
physical perfection, to be defined by each claimant according to his own standard.

Another important example of illegitimate interference with the rightful liberty of the
individual, not simply threatened, but long since carried into triumphant effect, is
Sabbatarian legislation. Without doubt, abstinence on one day in the week, so far as the
exigencies of life permit, from the usual daily occupation, though in no respect
religiously binding on any except Jews, is a highly beneficial custom. And inasmuch as
this custom cannot be observed without a general consent to that effect among the
industrious classes, therefore, in so far as some persons by working may impose the same
necessity on others, it may be allowable and right that the law should guarantee to each,
the observance by others of the custom, by suspending the greater operations of industry
on a particular day. But this justification, grounded on the direct interest which others
have in each individual's observance of the practice, does not apply to the self-chosen
occupations in which a person may think fit to employ his leisure; nor does it hold good,
in the smallest degree, for legal restrictions on amusements. It is true that the
amusement of some is the day's work of others; but the pleasure, not to say the useful
recreation, of many, is worth the labor of a few, provided the occupation is freely
chosen, and can be freely resigned. The operatives are perfectly right in thinking that if
all worked on Sunday, seven days' work would have to be given for six days' wages: but so
long as the great mass of employments are suspended, the small number who for the
enjoyment of others must still work, obtain a proportional increase of earnings; and they
are not obliged to follow those occupations, if they prefer leisure to emolument. If a
further remedy is sought, it might be found in the establishment by custom of a holiday on
some other day of the week for those particular classes of persons. The only ground,
therefore, on which restrictions on Sunday amusements can be defended, must be that they
are religiously wrong; a motive of legislation which never can be too earnestly protested
against. ``Deorum injuriae Diis curae.'' It remains to be proved that society or any of
its officers holds a commission from on high to avenge any supposed offence to
Omnipotence, which is not also a wrong to our fellow-creatures. The notion that it is one
man's duty that another should be religious, was the foundation of all the religious
persecutions ever perpetrated, and if admitted, would fully justify them. Though the
feeling which breaks out in the repeated attempts to stop railway travelling on Sunday, in
the resistance to the opening of Museums, and the like, has not the cruelty of the old
persecutors, the state of mind indicated by it is fundamentally the same. It IS a
determination not to tolerate others in doing what is permitted by their religion, because
it is not permitted by the persecutor's religion. It is a belief that God not only
abominates the act of the misbeliever, but will not hold us guiltless if we leave him
unmolested.

I cannot refrain from adding to these examples of the little account commonly made of
human liberty, the language of downright persecution which breaks out from the press of
this country, whenever it feels called on to notice the remarkable phenomenon of
Mormonism. Much might be said on the unexpected and instructive fact, that an alleged new
revelation, and a religion, founded on it, the product of palpable imposture, not even
supported by the prestige of extraordinary qualities in its founder, is believed by
hundreds of thousands, and has been made the foundation of a society, in the age of
newspapers, railways, and the electric telegraph. What here concerns us is, that this
religion, like other and better religions, has its martyrs; that its prophet and founder
was, for his teaching, put to death by a mob; that others of its adherents lost their
lives by the same lawless violence; that they were forcibly expelled, in a body, from the
country in which they first grew up; while, now that they have been chased into a solitary
recess in the midst of a desert, many in this country openly declare that it would be
right (only that it is not convenient) to send an expedition against them, and compel them
by force to conform to the opinions of other people. The article of the Mormonite doctrine
which is the chief provocative to the antipathy which thus breaks through the ordinary
restraints of religious tolerance, is its sanction of polygamy; which, though permitted to
Mahomedans, and Hindoos, and Chinese, seems to excite unquenchable animosity when
practised by persons who speak English, and profess to be a kind of Christians. No one has
a deeper disapprobation than I have of this Mormon institution; both for other reasons,
and because, far from being in any way countenanced by the principle of liberty, it is a
direct infraction of that principle, being a mere riveting of the chains of one half of
the community, and an emancipation of the other from reciprocity of obligation towards
them. Still, it must be remembered that this relation is as much voluntary on the part of
the women concerned in it, and who may be deemed the sufferers by it, as is the case with
any other form of the marriage institution; and however surprising this fact may appear,
it has its explanation in the common ideas and customs of the world, which teaching women
to think marriage the one thing needful, make it intelligible that many a woman should
prefer being one of several wives, to not being a wife at all. Other countries are not
asked to recognize such unions, or release any portion of their inhabitants from their own
laws on the score of Mormonite opinions. But when the dissentients have conceded to the
hostile sentiments of others, far more than could justly be demanded; when they have left
the countries to which their doctrines were unacceptable, and established themselves in a
remote corner of the earth, which they have been the first to render habitable to human
beings; it is difficult to see on what principles but those of tyranny they can be
prevented from living there under what laws they please, provided they commit no
aggression on other nations, and allow perfect freedom of departure to those who are
dissatisfied with their ways. A recent writer, in some respects of considerable merit,
proposes (to use his own words,) not a crusade, but a civilizade, against this polygamous
community, to put an end to what seems to him a retrograde step in civilization. It also
appears so to me, but I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be
civilized. So long as the sufferers by the bad law do not invoke assistance from other
communities, I cannot admit that persons entirely unconnected with them ought to step in
and require that a condition of things with which all who are directly interested appear
to be satisfied, should be put an end to because it is a scandal to persons some thousands
of miles distant, who have no part or concern in it. Let them send missionaries, if they
please, to preach against it; and let them, by any fair means, (of which silencing the
teachers is not one,) oppose the progress of similar doctrines among their own people. If
civilization has got the better of barbarism when barbarism had the world to itself, it is
too much to profess to be afraid lest barbarism, after having been fairly got under,
should revive and conquer civilization. A civilization that can thus succumb to its
vanquished enemy must first have become so degenerate, that neither its appointed priests
and teachers, nor anybody else, has the capacity, or will take the trouble, to stand up
for it. If this be so, the sooner such a civilization receives notice to quit, the better.
It can only go on from bad to worse, until destroyed and regenerated (like the Western
Empire) by energetic barbarians.